What losing our biggest client has taught us

I recently read a blog about a South African couplewho quit their day jobs in advertising to travel the world – and ended up scrubbing toilets to support their dream lifestyle!

Though I admire their honesty and hard work, I reckon scouring porcelain isn’t the only way to support yourself when you cut ties to the real world to and do your own thing.

Dave’s work setup in Cebu City

We’ve been travelling full time for over two and half years and have been able to support ourselves thanks to the remote digital work we have been able to attract through our online business, Red Platypus, which draws on our experience as professional journalists and writers.

We specialise in copywriting and video and have clients all over the world who send us work. These writing jobs help us to keep our show on the road without us having to resort to menial labour to get by.

Digital nomadism is emerging

The world of work is changing rapidly and more and more people around the globe are becoming like us – embracing remote working opportunities.

Now, it may seem that working remotely is a glamorous lifestyle; sipping icy cocktails beside an infinity pool with your laptop mirroring the sun.

But the truth is that remote working is a lot of hard work and takes self-discipline and determination. What we like about it though is that it is work that fits with your lifestyle, not the other way around.

Sometimes being a digital nomad feels like an uphill struggle

There’s no commute, there’s no office politics and there’s very little hassle. Our day consists of highly focused work for our clients, and when that’s all done and dusted, we’re free to do what we want – creative pursuits like writing fiction and drawing, or sightseeing wherever we may be.

Losing our biggest client

Like any small business, we have our ups and downs. Unfortunately, we recently lost a major copywriting client, a big blow that has made us rethink our long term business strategies and forced us to scramble for more work.

We’ve had to hustle, and hustle fast. We pitched our work to a number of magazines and newspapers, and have been fortunate enough to have had our writing featured in some major publications recently.

Happy that our writing has been featured in some major publications recently

These are goals we’ve had for ages, and losing our biggest client not only gave us the free time to pursue these goals, but also gave us a kick up the backside to do it quickly.

To tie us over, we’ve also joined the website Copify, which takes copywriting jobs from a wide range of clients and sends us briefs to complete. The pay isn’t great – $14 for 350 words, but we can write these articles in 15 minutes flat so it helps us to earn some quick cash.

Landing new work makes me happy as a pig in mud

The more work we do for the site, the more jobs we get sent and this in turn improves our ranking as writers with them, so we hope to be earning more for our words shortly. We’ll let you know how it goes.

This mad scramble to find new work has put us on edge a little, but we haven’t had to dip into our savings yet…. and we haven’t had to clean toilets.

It just goes to show, if you have the skills, you can pay the bills, no matter where you are. No scrubbing necessary!

Have you ever lost a major client? How did you deal with it?

This post was brought to you by Copify. As always, our opinions about losing our biggest client are our own!